Decorating Tips

I'd really like my house to look nice - like something from HGTV or from the blogs of the gifted ladies who have an eye for decor and coordinating fabrics.  My everything-coordinating, everything-in-its-place nature combined with my expensive taste (which I can't indulge in!LOL) just draws me to beautiful, textural, interesting, trinkety items.

I used to try to decorate and coordinate, even though I honestly don't have the talent but I like to try.  I guess I still do this a little bit.  I like to think that our living room has an "old world library" theme going on ...

but honestly, in the last 12 years that a child or children have blessed my home, my taste has become less everything-coordinates and more anything-goes:

 You see, beside my painfully cross-stitched picture that I had matted and framed professionally back in the early 1990's (when I actually had time to do needlework) there hangs - fastened by scotch tape - a lovely picture colored by my 10 year old daughter.  She embellished it with "I love you" and "To:  Mom ... From:  Anna".  I worked on my cross-stitch for months - she worked on hers for a few minutes, but it is far more valuable to me! 

By my scripture calendar in my bedroom is another reminder that my daughter thought of me - and colored this "just for you, Momma".

The reminders are all over my house.  If you tilt your head (sorry, didn't check my photos before downloading), you can see another "I love you" on a hand-drawn picture on notebook paper, fastened by a magnet to the side of my fridge.  The colorful potholder - made by my daughter on her little plastic craft loom - was a spontaneous gift from her too.  Every time I see it, I am reminded of my colorful daughter who carefully made it with her sometimes-clumsy fingers. 

There once was a time when I had no children to decorate my home with not only their artwork, but also with their jackets hung on the banister and their fingerprints on the glass doors ... and there will come a day when they will leave me (if i let them!!) ... and my house might just be neatly decorated and cleaned up again ... well, until I have grandchildren!  :)